A number of Conservative MPs have soured on Pierre Poilievre as leader, but despite this growing angst, his position is relatively secure because there is no strong appetite to oust him and choose someone new right now, according to party and caucus sources who spoke to CBC News.
Last year, Poilievre was on the cusp of leading his party to the largest Conservative government in a generation only to fall short when the Liberals replaced an unpopular incumbent with a leader offering a new vision.
He has struggled to recover ever since, facing accusations from some critics that he’s yesterday’s man, and poorly placed to deal with the issue of our time: an increasingly hostile U.S. government determined to wreck Canada economically.
Poilievre earned plaudits for a series of pro-Canada interviews on U.S. television last week, but he hasn’t said if he supports the government’s retaliatory tariffs on American products. He says he wants to wait for an “analysis” of the expected economic costs before taking a position.
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His lines about this fight have largely focused on trying to cajole the government to bring Parliament back sooner than planned and reveal a failed trade deal that negotiators say is protected by confidentiality clauses.
Sources speaking to CBC News on the sidelines of the party’s caucus retreat in Penticton, B.C., describe caucus morale as low because the U.S. dispute dominates the news cycle, putting their leader and the team at a disadvantage.
One MP said Canadians simply “don’t want to hear from us right now,” and their relevance is in question.
Poilievre has made a career out of fiercely opposing Liberal policies he says have ruined this country. That sort of rhetoric doesn’t sell as well as it used to given the current patriotic climate, this MP said.
CBC News has agreed not to name the sources so they can speak freely about internal dynamics.
But at least one MP, Jamil Jivani, who has said Canadians have thrown “an anti-America hissy fit” and that the government is overreacting to the trade war, publicly suggested he wants his leader to take a harder line.
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During Poilievre’s U.S. media tour, which was largely deferential to Carney, Jivani, a close friend of Vice-President JD Vance, said: “You have people who should be offering an alternative to the Liberals instead going out there to appease people in positions of power.”
In this context, the party’s poll numbers have fallen further. The recent performance in federal byelections — losing one seat and considerable support in two others — has only increased the sense of doom among some Conservatives.
“I think you have to be quite honest, this is not the position that we want to be in at this juncture — there’s no question about that,” Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman told reporters after meeting with her caucus mates in the B.C. interior.
Conservatives not in ‘position we want to be in,’ says deputy leader
Lantsman said that given the underperformance, the party will make some “changes” to the Conservative playbook this fall.
What’s unlikely to change is the leader. While some MPs say behind closed doors that they are decidedly done with Poilievre, most don’t want to take the next step and trigger a Reform Act ousting, like the one parliamentarians used to remove the last leader, Erin O’Toole, sources said.
Such a move could split the party, as some of the more stridently populist members might revolt against what could be perceived as an elite-driven coup, said one MP.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett said the party base strongly supported Poilievre at his leadership review in January — Poilievre won a commanding 88 per cent of the vote — so the caucus will stick with him.
When asked if Poilievre is the best person to lead the party right now, Barrett deferred to the grassroots.
“The Conservative membership made a very strong decision this year for Mr. Poilievre to lead our party. And that’s the direction that we’ve taken,” he said in an interview.
One senior Conservative staffer said replacing Poilievre now would just needlessly “burn through” another leader given the perception that the Liberals would likely win if there’s another election sometime soon.
This staffer posited that it’s better to let Poilievre lead the party into another election, potentially lose and then resign to trigger a new leadership process. That would be less divisive than trying to remove a leader who has a strong and vocal online following, especially one who sailed through a recent leadership review, the staffer said.
Another ex-campaign staffer close to Poilievre said even if a Reform Act ouster prompted the leadership selection process, Poilievre could always run again and win — given few people have expressed serious interest in the job.
While he came up short, Poilievre did lead his party to a respectable showing in the last campaign, taking 41 per cent of the vote and 144 seats, a figure that has since been whittled down by floor-crossings and defections.
Poilievre could reassure skeptical members that while things aren’t looking good now, they can change on a dime in politics, this ex-campaign staffer said.
Plus, given the divisions in caucus over how to handle the U.S., as well as other longstanding divides on social issues, Poilievre is best placed to hold this disparate group together, the staffer said.
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Chad Rogers, a longtime Conservative and a partner at the public affairs firm Crestview Strategy, said all is not lost for Poilievre.
Rogers said he is old enough to remember when some pundits claimed former prime minister Paul Martin would win a “super majority” in 2004, leaving the unpopular Stephen Harper on the Opposition benches for years.
That never panned out — Martin limped to a minority, and Harper eventually won and governed for nearly a decade.
Carney’s aura could also wear off as it did for that Liberal leader some 20 years ago, Rogers said. Poilievre is struggling to punch through now, but that might not always be the case, he said.
He said Poilievre’s plan to go all-in on affordability concerns during this fall sitting of Parliament could bear fruit, given that voters consistently tell pollsters it’s a major issue for them.
“I don’t know that I would want to be an incumbent premier or prime minister anywhere in Canada with the inflation numbers, the debt numbers. There are a number of bills soon coming due to pay,” he said.
“I think as a Conservative, I have a medium-term optimism that Canadians are about to hire us back to clean up the economy.”
MP Michelle Rempel Garner said Poilievre’s understanding of what average Canadians are going through in an economy wracked by higher prices makes him a good leader for this moment.
“I’m proud to serve under his leadership this fall,” she said.
